Earth
Ecologically devastated and infested by the weird spawn of the TITANs, transhumanity’s homeworld doesn’t get many visitors. Earth’s once-populous urban regions are massive sprawls ruined by war and heavy weather, infested with dangerous artificial life and the occasional survivalist gang. Elsewhere, irradiated blast zones and desolate wasteland prevail. Due to harsh climatic conditions, the wilderness has been slow to reassert itself. Vast swaths of dead forest or burned grassland are common sights. Even from orbit, Earth shows deep scars. Breaks in the sooty cloud cover created by orbital bombardment during the Fall reveal continents ravaged by coastal flooding, desertification, and radical temperature shifts. The only known detonation of an antimatter bomb within a planetary atmosphere, centered on what was the Chicago-waukee Metroplex in North America, left a crater over 200 kilometers wide wherein most matter was instantly vaporized. Craters left by mass driver bombardment dot the surface as well. Mass die-offs of lynchpin species like honey bees and krill destroyed entire ecosystems, leaving vast swathes of barren land and sea inhabited by only the most adaptable species. Most of Europe is sub-artic; much of Africa and North America, desert. Ironically, transhumanity’s deployment of nuclear weapons against TITAN surface installations arrested the effects of global warming by creating a nuclear winter. Nuclear attacks against Earth have ceased, but the Lunar mass drivers still occasionally hurl captured asteroids at suspected surface works created by remaining TITAN war machines. In any case, the damage from humanity’s warming of the globe was already done. The patterns of life on Earth, and the very face of the planet, have been irrevocably rewritten. Earth once had multiple space elevators in operation, but with exception of the Kilimanjaro beanstalk, the others were destroyed during the Fall, wrapping around the planet as they crashed to Earth, leaving swathes of destruction. Population Earth’s population is a matter of speculation. The reclaimers and Lunar authorities, both of whom spend a great deal of effort monitoring Earth, agree that surface energy emissions suggest a population of about one million once-humans living as servitors to the TITANs, although these numbers assume patterns of energy usage similar to those of pre-Fall humanity. Though the Planetary Consortium claims that no survivors remain on Earth, reclaimer estimates guess that between 20,000 and 100,000 free transhumans remain. These numbers are hard to formulate, given the limited number of remote areas where transhumans could remain undetected while obtaining enough food to subsist. Some areas likely to conceal sizable remnant populations include the highlands of Papua-New Guinea, the Ozark Mountains of North America, and the jungle uplands of Vietnam and Laos, though it is also possible that certain underground and undersea settlements survive. Attempts to make contact with survivors universally end in disaster. During the Fall, thousands of people unable to escape Earth resorted to having themselves backed up and transmitted off-planet. Many of these — along with some who had no backups — also put their bodies in cryogenic storage, hoping to wait out the Fall for rescue. Some reclaimers have speculated that dozens of these cryogenic facilities may still be functional. Habitats Earth had a mature orbital industry sector and a considerable population in orbit at the time of the Fall, with over a billion people living full-time in space. Earth orbit was one of the fiercest battlegrounds of the Fall, however, and hundreds of habitats and other installations were destroyed or rendered unusable. As such, Earth orbit and the Lagrange points are littered with the detritus of pre-Fall humanity. Derelict habitats can mean tidy profits for intrepid scavengers, but many are also infested with TITAN spawn and hostile nanoswarms, making them incredibly dangerous. To make matters worse, someone or something has unleashed a large number of autonomous killsats in Earth orbit to interdict would-be visitors. Some of these are repurposed pre-Fall military hardware, while others are newer constructions. So far, no one claims responsibility for them. The Planetary Consortium is suspected, as they support and sometimes enforce a quarantine of the planet, but the possibility exists that the killsats may be TITAN relics or the efforts of another agency. Despite the chaos of Earth orbit, numerous habitats remain active here, many of them participants in either the Planetary Consortium or Lunar-Lagrange Alliance. Dozens of formerly derelict habitats have also become home to squatters, some of them with criminal intent, others just looking to escape the squalor of life in the overcrowded Lunar-Lagrange habitats, even if it means taking a risk. * Fresh Kills * Paradise * Vo Nguyen Also see Luna. Category:Setting Category:Gazeteer Category:Solar System Category:Core Book